A yelp escapes my mouth. Her face is inches from mine when everything goes into slow motion, and my eyes round at what I see. For one second, the Starfire activates within me and then sputters, as if a flickering flame snuffed out.
Hammond’s glare in her eyes shifts from fury to confusion. She pinches her eyebrows together as if grimacing in pain.
Time returns full force, and Hammond snaps her hand away from me as if burned. The second her fingers leave my skin, it’s as if my body collides with a solid stone wall. I gasp and my head spins. Everything goes dark except for the blue-green ghost of Starfire energy. Then that dissipates too.
Chapter 24
The pain in my brain zings from side to side as I clutch my head in agony. Luca’s dead body hitting the ground with a thud haunts me. The ghost of the sound rattles around in my head endlessly, and I struggle to shove away the clinging image from my mind.
I barely knew Luca, let alone even liked him. But I never wanted to see him die. And then General Atkins and the others—gone too in a fiery explosion. They were all trying to make things right. And now nothing is right.
I grab for Mom’s ring on my finger to soothe my nerves. My stomach sinks and nausea rolls to the surface. Dad has the band. And he’s on Earth. So far away. Tears continue to soak my cheeks.
“Please help me,” I beg to the darkness. But no one comes for what seems like ages. Who would come anyway? Hammond isn’t going to help, and no one else knows where I am.
Despite the pain in my head, I crawl around the space on my hands and knees, running my fingers over the smooth floor and walls. I’m trapped in a cell that can’t be more than six feet by six feet, with one exit. The door has no handle on the inside. At least, not one I can locate. I push to my feet, palm pressed to a wall for balance, and then reach for the ceiling. But my shaking hand can’t feel it.
Calm down, Cassi, I repeat to myself over and over, even though the words don’t work. My mind is a jumble of agony, confusion, and death. If only I could summon Javen or port out of here myself.
Pressing all my fears down, I focus on the Starfire, but again, nothing happens. Why won’t the power work? I attempt again to call for the memories of the Protectors to help me, but that yields nothing either. It’s as if my ability to use the crystals never existed. I slide to the floor and gather myself into a ball, pressing into the corner of the room, and then wrap my arms around my body. I rock forward and back, over and over.
The door to my cell flies open, and I swing my gaze toward the movement. A shock zips through my left eye from the blinding light, and I throw my hands to my eyes to cover them. The door slams shut.
“Cassiopeia,” a muffled woman’s voice says. “You must focus. Our time is limited.”
“What are you doing to me?” I scream, burying my face into my hands. “If you’re going to kill me, then just do it.”
Two hands grab my shoulders and shake me. “I know it’s difficult. Believe me, I know. But you have to stay alert.”
I blink my eyes open and squint against the light. I glance around at the space’s white walls. Looking up, I can’t make out where the light is coming from. It’s as if the illumination is radiating from nowhere in particular.
And Hammond is standing right in front of me.
Despite the stabbing pain, my eyes widen. I rip her hands from my shoulders. With a grunt, I push along the floor to scoot away from her. But there’s barely any place to go, and I end up trapped in another corner.
I screech, “What are you doing to me, Hammond?”
“Shut up, girl.” She presses a hand to my mouth. “You need to listen.”
“No!” I scream, and the instant the word leaves my lips, Hammond slaps my cheek.
I fall to the side and stare up at her in complete shock. My cheek stings and my breath punches hard against my lungs.
She kneels beside me, her eyes glistening, as if glossy. She leans in and whispers, “I know the Starfire is inside of you somehow. You must call for it.”
“I . . . I did.” The words tumble out before I can stop them. I clap a hand over my mouth before anything else stupid comes out.
Hammond’s nostrils flare, and once again her eyes swirl with cyan, then return to normal. She rips my hand from my mouth and stands, yanking me with her.
“How are you using the Starfire?” I ask, dumbfounded.
“You’re not asking the questions here.” She digs her nails into my wrists. “We need to know how you’re using the crystal’s powers. And that means you need to call on them now. Or you are of very little use to me.”
Hammond twists my wrist, and a cry escapes my lips as fiery pain shoots through my arm.
“I can’t!”
In a swooping motion, she releases my wrist and then elbows me into the wall. The air is forced from my lungs, and I double over, coughing.
“Then you can stay here until either you can—”
“You’re a horrible person,” I cough out, still trying to drag in air. “My dad never liked you, and you’ve just gotten worse. You’re killing the Alku, and you’re going to end up destroying Earth in the process.” My head stabs with lingering pain. I grit my teeth and glare at Hammond.
She tweaks an eyebrow up into a perfect arch. “Cassi, my goal was never to let it come to this. I want to save Earth—I do. Arcadia was supposed to be our salvation. A backup if healing Earth didn’t work.” She glances away briefly and then back at me. “I’m sorry, but you are going to feel intense pain again in a second.”
“Wha—” Pain ripples through my head. I grab for my skull and fall against the ground, screaming. “Why are you doing this?”
“So you’ll listen.”
“It would be much easier to listen,” I yell, “if my head didn’t feel as if it were going to pop off at any second!”
Hammond strokes my hair, and I pull from her. “I know. That’s why you must quit fighting me.” She leans down and whispers, “I need what’s inside of you. And if you won’t give it to me, I’ll have to take it. We need it for Earth.”
I inhale a shaky breath as the pain subsides. “But my dad already has a plan for Earth. Renewal will work.”
The hardened lines of her face soften, as if bored. “What do you know? You are a child. Your father is dead, and his plan is dead with him. I had that bomb placed on the Pathfinder to get rid of him and his ideas. He was holding us back from the true value of Arcadia.”
My stomach spasms. She ordered his death. I always knew she was behind the bombing, but the confirmation makes it that much more real. He escaped with the help of Vihann, but so many others didn’t. She took innocent lives to hide her true target—Dad.
I study President Hammond’s hawkish features and her tousled white-blonde hair. She can’t know for sure that he’s dead. His body was never found. She must have seen him vanish on the video feed, just like Irene and I did. So why is she still holding to the lie that she knows he’s dead?
Hammond must be making a play for my father to reveal himself to her. She not only needs my Starfire power, but she must also need Dad to make her plan work.
I clench my jaw, refusing to speak. I will not give her any more information than she already has.
“How can you live with yourself,” I grit out, “knowing that mining the Starfire will probably murder the Alku? They were here first, and you are stealing from them.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “So, you would rather see billions of people on Earth die rather than potentially a few hundred thousand Alku we didn’t even know existed until recently.”
I think back to President Hammond’s meeting with Luca, when she admitted that her ultimate plan didn’t even include most of the people on Earth. She wants to create a new dimension on Earth for the best of the best to start over in. “You and I both know you aren’t planning to save everyone on Earth.”
She pierces me with her stare, an elegant wrinkle forming between her brows. “You are right that we may no
t be able to salvage the planet as is . . . but we will try. And if that doesn’t work, I have a backup plan.”
I ball my hands into fists. “A dangerous one that you have no idea if it will even work! You could annihilate Earth as well as kill off the Alku. If you used Renewal, you might be able to save both.”
“If Earth cannot be saved, then humanity will have to make do with Arcadia. And sharing this planet with another species is too risky for our survival. I will not allow you or your father’s ridiculous plans to ruin our chances.”
I let out a long sigh. There’s no arguing with this woman. My only hope is to figure out a way out of here. I glance at the door and back at Hammond.
“You won’t escape so easily as walking out the door,” she says.
“I’ve done more difficult things,” I mutter.
“Oh, from what I’ve heard, I’m sure that’s true.” She furrows her brows even more. “I have my best people working to extract information from your body.”
I dart my eyes around the room. “How? There’s no one else here.”
“Everything you see, not that it’s much, is in your mind. Your body is in a medical facility in Primaro. But until you give us what we need, this is where you’ll stay. For now, a cocktail of the Starfire and drugs are allowing me to communicate with you.”
My chest constricts at her words. If I don’t know where I am, even if the Starfire was working, how could I tell Javen where to find me? I need to port out of here.
“And as an insurance policy, one of those drugs is keeping you alive. If you try to escape, you will stop receiving it. And you will die within one minute.”
My heart nearly stops. Is she bluffing?
“So,” she practically purrs in triumph, “your best bet to survive is to give us what we need.”
“I’m not giving you anything,” I grit through clenched teeth.
President Hammond’s eyes light with cyan fire. “Stay here and rot for all I care,” she scoffs. “At least with you contained, you can’t do any more damage than you already have.”
Before I can say anything else, she spins on her heel. The door flies open and she exits. My head jolts with pain and I collapse to the ground in a fetal position. The door slams shut. With the echoing sound, the lights go black—swallowing me whole.
Leaving me for dead.
Book three of Cassie's journey is at an end, but you can read the gripping conclusion in Zenith.
ZENITH
BOOK FOUR OF THE STARFIRE WARS
Chapter 1
I shudder awake, only to be met with inky darkness—the same blackness that has greeted me a thousand times.
A thousand times? That can’t be right. There’s no way I’ve been in a cell created by my mind this long. Have I?
Maybe I have.
I rub my hands over my face just to make sure it’s still there. Luckily, it is.
Pressing the tips of my fingers to my temples, I focus on how I haven’t felt any pain in a long while. Not from the Starfire adjustments or from whatever Hammond is doing to extract the crystal’s power from my body in Primaro—if that’s still where she’s keeping me.
It’s possible she figured out that physical torture was never going to break me and now she’s giving solitary mental confinement a spin. But I have a feeling that she has just paused to cook up something even more sinister to draw the secrets of the Starfire out of me.
Well, it won’t work. There’s nothing that horrible woman can do to make me betray the Alku or the mission the Starfire has given me. I won’t say a word, not even if she pulls me apart cell by cell.
That’s assuming she hasn’t already . . .
Maybe my brain is floating in a jar on a shelf in Primaro, and I’m destined to float in this black nothing forever. Or maybe it’s on display in an Earth museum, a thousand years after Hammond destroyed the Alku to save our home planet. Maybe my silence doesn’t even matter.
I push the stupid thought away. I didn’t travel ten thousand light years from Earth, meet the love of my life—who happens to be an alien—and discover I’m actually one-quarter alien myself, just to wind up as a brain in a jar. I refuse to let that be the way this all ends.
I press my index finger against my temple to focus on what I know. Dad, Vihann, and Max traveled to Earth in hopes of convincing Max’s father to help us get reinforcements to Arcadia. Irene, Javen, and the others are at the mountain hideout, helping the Alku recover and preparing for the next inevitable battle . . . or at least that’s where they all were when Luca and I were captured. When Luca was shot.
How many times did I have to watch that happen before the darkness took over?
Slowly, I inhale a deep breath through my nose to steady my nerves and then envision Javen—tall, dark hair and eyes, and sepia skin. His brow is furrowed, and tension pulls at his jaw. Smiles are hard to come by when someone wants to kill everything and everyone you love. And likely, his appearance is only mirroring my own emotions, since I’m creating the daydream.
Reaching out, I touch the dark stubble running across his jawline. The roughness catches on the tips of my fingers, and his eyes shift from brown to cyan. My breath hitches as he leans into my touch and closes his eyelids. The tiniest smile pulls at the corners of his lips.
“Cassi . . .” He sighs my name in a low tone that ignites a fire in my chest. “You are everything.”
When Javen’s lids open again, his irises swirl with unnatural color.
“I’m not everything,” I whisper back as heat trails up my neck.
The swirling in his eyes stops, but the color remains cyan. He tips his head slightly. “Why don’t you see it yet? How special you are?”
I hold my breath and gulp down the lump in my throat when Javen leans into me. Hot energy radiates from his body and he pauses, his lips not more than an inch from mine. His warm breath calls for my mouth to be on his, and our arms entangle. But he waits.
So I wait.
Wait for everything to come crashing down.
The lights suddenly flicker and illuminate my tiny gray cell; Javen vanishes.
“No!” I yell, grabbing the empty air his frame just occupied. In a flash, I spin and find Hammond standing behind me. She’s wearing a black shirt and a casual pair of black pants. Her white-blonde hair is loose in its blunt cut, and her pursed lips are pale, nearly bloodless, as if she’s tightened her expression for so long the life may never return.
“Aren’t you ready to go home yet?” She crosses her slender arms over her chest.
None of this is real, none of this is real.
“You know very well that you’re never sending me home,” I answer brazenly.
“Cassi.” Her lips press together for a moment. “We must save Earth. The atmosphere on our home planet is quickly collapsing, and mass panic is ready to take over the globe.”
I say nothing.
“The situation was bad in the big cities before we left—shootings, murders, theft. Think of what will happen to all those poor people when they realize that the world is literally falling apart, and much faster than we ever anticipated.”
My stomach clenches as Irene’s family in LA comes to mind. I’ve never been to the cities—Dad always said they were too dangerous—but Irene shared how hard life was for her and for all those who live there. I can barely imagine.
Hammond’s right hand lifts and my tiny cell disappears. We stand in the middle of a filthy, crowded street. Overhead, advertisements for all sorts of seedy products and services flash on the large telescreens affixed to each tall building. The sounds and strobing lights accost my senses, and all I want to do is leave. Claustrophobia presses in on me, but the people around us don’t notice our presence because we’re not really here.
Above us, the sky is nearly brown with smog. Just the sight of the toxic air makes me want to cough, and I gawk at the pollution until a man with a dirty face across the street shouts an obscenity at another man and then shoves him to the ground.
Hammond takes my arm to stop me from moving, not that I intended to. “There’s nothing you can change here right now.”
I gasp as the man on the ground whips out a homemade-looking blaster and doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. The weapon emits a red blast right into his attacker’s chest.
“Get down!” someone yells. Many in the street notice the altercation, but the man is already dead, and the shooter scurries away into the still-thick crowd.
Two small, metallic surveillance bots swoop in from overhead. “Please return to your business,” comes a voice. “This situation will be attended to by Los Angeles Security. Please return to your business,” it repeats.
As if this has happened a million times before, most people around us barely even stop to look now that the scuffle is over. They probably just want to get off the streets before someone tries to shoot them, too. I don’t blame them. I don’t want to be here either.
“You want to help them, right, Cassi?” Hammond’s husky voice breaks through my thoughts. “The Starfire could make Earth healthy again . . . ease the suffering of these people.”
I swallow back a forming lump in my throat. “Of course I want to help them! But not like this! Not by destroying the Alku.”
The scene vanishes as Hammond raises her hand again, bringing us back to the cell’s safety—if I can call it that.
The ghostly images of LA and the city’s people hang in my mind. My lungs heave for breath, but it feels like a pile of bricks are sitting on my chest.
“Earth’s cities are suffering, and it’s only going to worsen—and quickly.” Hammond’s nostrils flare. “You know I will do what it takes to use the Starfire to save billions. The power it provides will not only turn back time on Earth’s health. It will also make life there a hundred times better than it has been for the world population. The clean energy the crystals can provide will help solve world hunger and pave the way for equality among the citizens.”
I scoff. “You only want to open a second dimension on Earth and relocate those who can pay enough to cross. None of the poor will have a chance.”
The Starfire Wars: The Complete Series Page 50